Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/217

 of coming often to this shallow part of the river to drink. He did not know why so many of them, when they had slaked their thirst, turned and walked back across the space of flat rock and sand, passing within ten feet of the alder hedge. He knew only that this often happened, that it seemed to be a habit of the turkey kind. The fact alone interested him; the reasons did not matter.

From the thicket's edge his pale eyes searched the open space before him and roved up and down the stream, seeking the gobbler whose voice he had heard perhaps five minutes before. Then he stole slowly along the alder hedge nearly to its end and crouched there utterly motionless, completely invisible.

So still was he, so perfectly did his tawny body blend with the foliage of the screening alders and the yellow sand under them, that even the farsighted eyes of Storm-Rider, the golden eagle of Younaguska, failed to distinguish the outline of the puma's form. Yet, when a wood mouse scuttled across the flat surface of the rock near the alder hedge, Storm-Rider noted its passage instantly; and when a crayfish moved slowly across a little space of sand, the eyes of the soaring eagle picked it out and his gaze dwelt momentarily upon it.